[sles-beta] Beta 5 and VMware-tools

[Bo Dang]

Hi Urs and Joe, 

Thanks for your further suggestions for us! 

Best Regards, 
Bo 
----- Original Message -----

From: "urs frey" <urs.frey at post.ch> 
To: bdang at vmware.com, jrd at netlab1.net, kdupke at suse.com, allen at ua.edu, mge at suse.com, kukuk at suse.de, uwedr at suse.com 
Cc: sles-beta at lists.suse.com, jsavanyo at vmware.com 
Sent: Thursday, May 1, 2014 3:42:38 PM 
Subject: AW: [sles-beta] Beta 5 and VMware-tools 



Hi Bo 



Thank you very much for your concern and explanations. 

See you only mention open-vm-tools. 

But there are the VMwareTools coming with the ESXi release itself. 

So there are two branches of VMwareTools obviously having different states at VMware itself in being supported, propagated and displayed in vSphere. 



Here in my place we do have an architecture board which carefully observes all points concerning supportability, certification matrices and also functionality itself. 

So it is not me, deciding what is allowed to use for production. 

As long as open-vm-tools are not stated green in vSphere display and do obviously not have the same state with VMware support itself, I will have to use the professional VMwareTools coming with ESXi release. 

This is strict and I can not help it. 



So the point is, that VMware internal there is a problem with the handling of the two branches on VMwareTools. 

This should be resolved preventing an oncoming support ping-pong on the back of the end-user. 



Best regards 




Urs Frey 

Post CH AG 

Informationstechnologie 

IT Betrieb 

Webergutstrasse 12 

3030 Bern (Zollikofen) 

Telefon : ++41 (0)58 338 58 70 

FAX : ++41 (0)58 667 30 07 

E-Mail: urs.frey at post.ch 





Von: Bo Dang [mailto:bdang at vmware.com] 
Gesendet: Thursday, April 24, 2014 6:05 AM 
An: Joe Doupnik; Frey Urs, IT222; Kai Dupke; allen at ua.edu; mge at suse.com; kukuk at suse.de; uwedr at suse.com 
Cc: sles-beta at lists.suse.com; John Savanyo 
Betreff: Re: [sles-beta] Beta 5 and VMware-tools 





Hi Kai,Joe,urs, allen, mge, Thorsten, uwe and all, 

Thanks a lot for your comments and concerns for open-vm-tools. I am copying John who might have more info in this list. 





We are working closely with SUSE with related items. Such as, you might know that toolsd service from open-vm-tools in current build will not be started automatically and you need to execute "sudo systemctl enable vmtoolsd" and "sudo systemctl start vmtoolsd" to start its service manually. Legacy tools service doesn't work well in current build , you will be suggested to remove some packages for "open-vm-tools" first for its legacy tools installation. Such as packages "open-vm-tools","open-vm-desktop" and "libvmtools0" 





Don't hesitate to let us know for any related issues :) 





Thanks again for all your supports and suggestions! 



Best Regards, 





Bo Dang 

bdang at vmware.com 
Level 8 South Wing of Tower C Raycom InfoTech Park 
No. 2 Kexueyuan South Road Haidian District Beijing, 100190, People's Republic of China 
+86-10-5993-4242 Office 
+86-10-5993-4205 Fax 





From: "Joe Doupnik" < jrd at netlab1.net > 
To: sles-beta at lists.suse.com 
Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2014 12:11:51 AM 
Subject: Re: [sles-beta] Beta 5 and VMware-tools 





Kai, 
Thanks for taking the time to write up this situation. The story appears to be better than I had thought. 
Joe D. 

On 23/04/2014 15:39, Kai Dupke wrote: 



VMware already made a statement on this list before, but I asked them to 
clarify again. 
The open-vm-tools are maintained by VMware but organized as an open 
source project. 
SLES 12 include the tools because VMware as partner asked us to include 
them, which is a good fit to our guest story. 
The today situation is an interim situation as with chicken-egg, because 
VMware can't drop the tools from the ESX product as SLES 11 for example 
does not contain the open-vm-tools at the moment. 
At the same time VMware can't just change the wording as the 
open-vm-tools are, open available for each to rebuild and grab, which 
could lead to false positive display. 
My understanding is that VMware will change the message to something 
like 'guest provided' in the display of the client, without any 3rd 
party or other confusion statement. 
We also work with VMware to get the support finalized in a way that 
these package will be tagged as fully supported. 
greetings kai 
On 04/23/2014 03:42 PM, Joe Doupnik wrote: 

<blockquote>

The key word is "if". We don't know that. There are various versions 
of VMware hypervisor in use, little is known about how the open-vmware 
tools fit into that puzzle and what it does/does not support in the way 
of features. 
Let's look at this geometrically, for welcomed relief. There is 
VMware, there are SUSE virtual machines, and sandwiched between is a set 
of tools. There are two interfaces involved. At the moment VMware-tools 
matches the hypervisor version of choice. The third party open-vmware 
offering hopefully (that ambiguous word) works with both sides today 
(not necessarily true in the recent past), yet it is a third party to be 
coordinated with the other two by means still unknown. The SUSE part of 
things changed so that the VMware tools will not build with our v12 beta 
5 material; again the reasons are unknown. 
How this situation will evolve during our beta is also unknown. 
Which of these approaches offers least risk and broad version 
coverage? Risk includes what the vendors involved will accept as a 
proper systems component when fingers are pointed. That's a description 
of what is concerning us about this situation. 
Joe D. 
On 23/04/2014 14:27, Beddingfield, Allen wrote: 

<blockquote>

I'm having a hard time understanding why there is such concern here. 
VMware supporting the open-vm-tools is preferable to me.  I can then 
use SUSE Manager to also manage my vm tools, instead of having to rely 
on VMware for such things.  I actually have a script that currently 
does this, instead of using VMware's interface, but if the 
functionality is the same, installing/updating is easier, and VMware 
doesn't care/supports it, I don't see a problem. 
-- 
Allen Beddingfield 
Systems Engineer 
The University of Alabama 
________________________________ 
From: sles-beta-bounces at lists.suse.com 
[ sles-beta-bounces at lists.suse.com ] on behalf of urs.frey at post.ch 
[ urs.frey at post.ch ] 
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2014 2:04 AM 
To: jrd at netlab1.net ; sles-beta at lists.suse.com 
Subject: Re: [sles-beta] Beta 5 and VMware-tools 
Hi 
I fully agree with Joe 
I mean I use VMwareTools coming together with the specific ESXi 
release for good reasons for years now on different Linux distributions. 
Now with SLES12 beta I am kind of “urged” to use open-vm-tools which 
obviously do not match the VMware environment I have here. 
Wouldn’t it be a solution to leave the final decision about which 
VMware Tools to use to the end user? 
So I may choose to install what comes with SLES or I can also use what 
gets delivered from ESXi. 
Therefore no automated installations anymore together with SLES12. 
We do not know what the plans on VMware are. 
For the moment, the statements of VMware about open-vm-tools do not 
really convince me. 
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2073803 
Best regards 
Urs Frey 
Post CH AG 
Informationstechnologie 
IT Betrieb 
Webergutstrasse 12 
3030 Bern (Zollikofen) 
Telefon : ++41 (0)58 338 58 70 
FAX     : ++41 (0)58 667 30 07 
E-Mail: urs.frey at post.ch <mailto:urs.frey at post.ch> 
Von: sles-beta-bounces at lists.suse.com 
[ mailto:sles-beta-bounces at lists.suse.com ] Im Auftrag von Joe Doupnik 
Gesendet: Tuesday, April 22, 2014 8:24 PM 
An: sles-beta at lists.suse.com 
Betreff: Re: [sles-beta] Beta 5 and VMware-tools 
Keeping a perspective on this. There is now a gulf between SLES 
v12 beta 5 and the VMware tools (o/s kind other 64-bit) provided with 
ESXi v5. The VMware software stalls while making kmods. That's all 
observational evidence. What we don't know is what changed. I will 
presume that the SLES (including kernel) part has, for probably good 
reasons, and that sooner or later VMware will issue tools for the v12 
level of SLES. But that is only my guessing. 
What remains unconvincing is saying VMware recommends the 
open-vmware tools. Lots of room to interpret what is said by whom and 
in what context. The evidence says VMware ships their own tools rather 
than the open-vmware ones. Folks with contractual details may well be 
concerned, but we give the betas a chance to develop further before 
jumping to firm conclusions. 
Joe D. 
On 22/04/2014 17:58, Joe Doupnik wrote: 
vCenter is a high priced separate management product. I do not 
have it. ESXi servers have their own set of VMware tools. We click on 
the vSphere client to request they be installed in a VM. They match 
the particular version of ESXi. They don't work with beta 5, which 
means there are two branches of tools and the vendor's branch has been 
made inoperable. The open-vmware-tools item has had a rather chequered 
history. I have no good reason to trust that item very far (at this 
time). Now the branches are really separated. Not a comfortable 
situation. 
Joe D. 
On 22/04/2014 17:49, Kai Dupke wrote: 
On 04/22/2014 02:42 PM, Joe Doupnik wrote: 
Returning to this particular VMware-tools item today. 
Two points. 
[...] 
The open-vm-tools on SLES are the tools VMware recommends for the use. 
With "3rd party" you refer to the display in the Virtual Center I assume. 
Bo Dang form VMware commented on this earlier: 
Thanks for this info and keep contacting us! As john metnioned in 
another thread "The intent of the message was to communicate that end 
users do not need to worry about installing/updating VMware tools 
centrally from vCenter. Instead users are expected to use OS package 
manager to maintain vmware tools or open-vm-tools. We published the 
following KB article to clarify that open-vm-tools are "supported" and 
there is a FAQ at the bottom about this message at 
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2073803 " and we are planning to change 
message in the future to remove "3rd Party" and instead say something 
like "Guest Managed" to reduce user concerns. 
greetings 
Kai Dupke 
Senior Product Manager 
Server Product Line 
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</blockquote>

Kai Dupke 
Senior Product Manager 
Server Product Line 




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